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Burmese days – Is the Golden Land on the cusp of a new era?

  There are some special places on earth which lure you such that you make damn sure you visit and once you get there, become hooked and vow to return.  Such is my experience with the magical land of Burma. Probably my earliest exposure to Burma was when I worked at Lonely Planet. As a [...]

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Malaysia: the good, the bad and the durian

As Australia continues its nauseating debate around the processing of asylum seekers and the proposed ‘Malaysia solution‘ finally meets its fate (hoorah!), my family and I have recently returned from a lovely holiday to peninsula Malaysia.  We had a fantastic time, and after many years of nearly visiting the country but always deciding at the [...]

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Exploitation or empowerment? The maid debate

For many years I have deliberated the ethics of hiring someone to clean my house.   With a mother who takes immense pride in her home yet believes it’s a plain waste of money to outsource cleaning, I grew up believing that only the very richest people had cleaners.   My early travels to Asia [...]

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Note to Gillard: go back to where you came from

For those engaged in Australia’s asylum seeker debate, SBS Television’s 3 part reality series ‘Go back to where you came from‘ has been one of the year’s most anticipated TV events and I for one certainly wasn’t going to miss it.  Even before the series went to air, a good 40,000 people on Facebook indicated [...]

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